AHA report offers interoperability steps for providers, vendors, government
The American Hospital Association's Interoperability Advisory Group (IAG) offers priorities to both improve patient care and engage patients in supporting new models of care in its 2015 report "Achieving Interoperability that Supports Care Transformation."
The IAG lists the following "must-dos" for players in the public and private sectors in order
According to the report, to leverage health information exchange to improve patient outcomes, providers must do the following:
• Set an expectation that vendors adhere to standards.
• Identify the highest priority information-sharing activities or use cases they want their health IT systems to support.
• Contribute their requirements for testing as the end-users of health IT systems.
• Invest in standardizing care processes and use of systems.
• Actively identify and share lessons learned and best practices.
And vendors must:
• Commit to consistent use of standards and implementation specifications, participate in testing and provide documentation on adherence to standards.
• Share expertise during development of standards, implementation specifications and use cases.
• Be more transparent about technical solutions.
• Align their business case with the needs of their customers.
The federal government must:
• Focus its interoperability efforts on accelerating exchange of data currently collected.
• Improve certification, based on more robust testing.
• Create and support robust testing tools to ensure systems conform to standards that support interoperability.
• Increase public reporting on how vendors support interoperability and information sharing.
• Lead selection of standards, including continued development and maturation of needed standards.
• Actively support adoption of standards by providers.
• Address patient identification and matching.
• Rely on existing policies and the incentives of new models of care to encourage information sharing by providers.
• Adopt a reasonable timeline for change.
Read the full report.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.